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I need to purchase a *good* openGL book. I have no idea what book is a good choice for a programmer like me, simply because I''m relatively new to programming (just getting into advanced polymorphism). I am completely ignorant to graphics as a whole, so, I''m turning to you people- the experts. I need a good OpenGL book (preferabbly in C++) that teaches how to use graphics dynamically in my applications from the ground up (from the ground up, I mean no background history is programming graphics). Is this book one that asks for too much and simply doesn''t exist? While I dunno- someone,please help a poor fella like me get some graphics in my apps!
Programming::~Fredric(const Annoy_Ance)

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OpenGL Programmers Guide 3rd edition by woo et al is the book on OpenGL. It should be good for someone w/ little graphics knowledge.That in combination w/ nehe''s tutorialhttp://nehe.gamedev.net/opengl.asp

Mike

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Be carefull with reading the OpenGL Programmers Guide 3rd edition, it describes OpenGL v 1.2! If you want your users to run your app they''ll have to download the new OpenGL version, which is not supported by Windows.

However, don''t take this too serious because most functions in OpenGL v 1.2 are the same (at least their names & parameters) as in OpenGL v 1.1

----------Drago

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I have the OpenGL Superbible 2nd Edition and it works very well for me. It starts off teaching you OGL with GLUT to keep things simple then moves into Win32 specifics and Rendering Contexts. Confused? Get the book!

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Good Evening,
I want to make a 2D game which involves displaying some debug information. Especially for collision, enemy sights and so on ...
First of I was thinking about all those shapes which I need will need for debugging purposes: circles, rectangles, lines, polygons.
I am really stucked right now because of the fundamental question:
Where do I store my vertices positions for each line (object)? Currently I am not using a model matrix because I am using orthographic projection and set the final position within the VBO. That means that if I add a new line I would have to expand the "points" array and re-upload (recall glBufferData) it every time. The other method would be to use a model matrix and a fixed vbo for a line but it would be also messy to exactly create a line from (0,0) to (100,20) calculating the rotation and scale to make it fit.
If I proceed with option 1 "updating the array each frame" I was thinking of having 4 draw calls every frame for the lines vao, polygons vao and so on.
In addition to that I am planning to use some sort of ECS based architecture. So the other question would be:
Should I treat those debug objects as entities/components?
For me it would make sense to treat them as entities but that's creates a new issue with the previous array approach because it would have for example a transform and render component. A special render component for debug objects (no texture etc) ... For me the transform component is also just a matrix but how would I then define a line?
Treating them as components would'nt be a good idea in my eyes because then I would always need an entity. Well entity is just an id !? So maybe its a component?
Regards,
LifeArtist

Hello. I am coding a small thingy in my spare time. All i want to achieve is to load a heightmap (as the lowest possible walking terrain), some static meshes (elements of the environment) and a dynamic character (meaning i can move, collide with heightmap/static meshes and hold a varying item in a hand ). Got a bunch of questions, or rather problems i can't find solution to myself. Nearly all are deal with graphics/gpu, not the coding part. My c++ is on high enough level.
Let's go:
Heightmap - i obviously want it to be textured, size is hardcoded to 256x256 squares. I can't have one huge texture stretched over entire terrain cause every pixel would be enormous. Thats why i decided to use 2 specified textures. First will be a tileset consisting of 16 square tiles (u v range from 0 to 0.25 for first tile and so on) and second a 256x256 buffer with 0-15 value representing index of the tile from tileset for every heigtmap square. Problem is, how do i blend the edges nicely and make some computationally cheap changes so its not obvious there are only 16 tiles? Is it possible to generate such terrain with some existing program?
Collisions - i want to use bounding sphere and aabb. But should i store them for a model or entity instance? Meaning i have 20 same trees spawned using the same tree model, but every entity got its own transformation (position, scale etc). Storing collision component per instance grats faster access + is precalculated and transformed (takes additional memory, but who cares?), so i stick with this, right? What should i do if object is dynamically rotated? The aabb is no longer aligned and calculating per vertex min/max everytime object rotates/scales is pretty expensive, right?
Drawing aabb - problem similar to above (storing aabb data per instance or model). This time in my opinion per model is enough since every instance also does not have own vertex buffer but uses the shared one (so 20 trees share reference to one tree model). So rendering aabb is about taking the model's aabb, transforming with instance matrix and voila. What about aabb vertex buffer (this is more of a cosmetic question, just curious, bumped onto it in time of writing this). Is it better to make it as 8 points and index buffer (12 lines), or only 2 vertices with min/max x/y/z and having the shaders dynamically generate 6 other vertices and draw the box? Or maybe there should be just ONE 1x1x1 cube box template moved/scaled per entity?
What if one model got a diffuse texture and a normal map, and other has only diffuse? Should i pass some bool flag to shader with that info, or just assume that my game supports only diffuse maps without fancy stuff?
There were several more but i forgot/solved them at time of writing
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